Oracle boss urges national ID cards, offers free software
(9/22/2001) Posted at 11:14 p.m. PDT Saturday, Sept. 22,
2001
Oracle boss urges national ID cards, offers free software
Idea driven by security concerns
BY PAUL ROGERS AND ELISE ACKERMAN
Mercury News
Broaching a controversial subject that has gained visibility
since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Oracle Chairman and
CEO Larry Ellison is calling for the United States to create
a national identification card system -- and offering to
donate the software to make it possible. Under Ellison's
proposal, millions of Americans would be fingerprinted and
the information would be placed on a database used by
airport security officials to verify identities of travelers
at airplane gates.
``We need a national ID card with our photograph and
thumbprint digitized and embedded in the ID card,'' Ellison
said in an interview Friday night on the evening news of
KPIX-TV in San Francisco. ``We need a database behind that,
so when you're walking into an airport and you say that you
are Larry Ellison, you take that card and put it in a reader
and you put your thumb down and that system confirms that
this is Larry Ellison,'' he said.
`Absolutely free'
Ellison's company, Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, is the
world's leading maker of database software. Ellison, worth
$15 billion, is among the world's richest people. ``We're
quite willing to provide the software for this absolutely
free,'' he said.
Calls for national ID cards traditionally have been met with
fierce resistance from civil liberties groups, who say the
cards would intrude on the privacy of Americans and allow
the government to track people's movements. But Ellison said
in the electronic age, little privacy is left anyway.
``Well, this privacy you're concerned about is largely an
illusion,'' he said. ``All you have to give up is your
illusions, not any of your privacy. Right now, you can go
onto the Internet and get a credit report about your
neighbor and find out where your neighbor works, how much
they earn and if they had a late mortgage payment and tons
of other information.'' Attempts by the Mercury News to
reach Ellison for further comment Saturday were
unsuccessful. Many questions about the proposal remain
unanswered, such as whether foreign nationals would be
required to have a card to enter the country. The hijackers
in the Sept. 11 attacks are not believed to have been U.S.
citizens.
In the TV interview with anchorman Hank Plante, Ellison said
shoppers have to disclose more information at malls to buy a
watch than they do to get on an airplane. ``Let me ask you.
There are two different airlines. Airline A says before you
board that airplane you prove you are who you say you are.
Airline B, no problem. Anyone who wants the price of a
ticket, they can go on that airline. Which airplane do you
get on?''
Oracle has a longstanding relationship with the federal
government. Indeed, the CIA was Ellison's first customer,
and the company's name stems from a CIA-funded project
launched in the mid-1970s that sought better ways of storing
and retrieving digital data. Civil libertarians said caution
is needed.
``It strikes me as a form of overreaction to the events that
we have experienced,'' said Robert Post, a constitutional
law professor at the University of California-Berkeley. ``If
we allow a terrorist attack to destroy forms of freedom that
we have enjoyed, we will have given the victory to them.
This kind of recommendation does just that.'' Post said
while such a system may catch some criminals, it could be
hacked or faked or evaded by capable terrorists. Nor is it
clear that such a system would have foiled the Sept. 11
attacks, he said.
Strong support
But polls last week show many Americans support a national
ID card. In a survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research
Center for the People & the Press, seven of 10 Americans
favored a requirement that citizens carry a national
identity card at all times to show to a police officer upon
request. The proposal had particularly strong support from
women. There was less support for government monitoring of
telephone calls, e-mails and credit card purchases.
The FBI already has an electronic fingerprint system for
criminals. In July 1999, the FBI's Integrated Automated
Fingerprint Identification System became operational. That
system keeps an electronic database of 41 million
fingerprints, with prints from all 10 fingers of people who
have been convicted of crimes.
Faster response
The system has reduced the FBI's criminal fingerprint
processing time from 45 days to less than two hours. Paul
Bresson, an FBI spokesman in Washington, said Saturday that
he is unaware of the details of Ellison's proposal and
declined comment.
Howard Gantman, a spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein,
D-Calif., said that she would be interested in discussing
the idea with Ellison. ``She does feel that we do need to
make some important advances in terms of increasing our
security,'' Gantman said. ``A lot of people have brought up
ideas about how to create more security and she's interested
in exploring them. She'd like to find out more.''
One group certain to fight the proposal is the American
Civil Liberties Union. A statement about ID cards posted on
the ACLU's national Web site says: ``A national ID card
would essentially serve as an internal passport. It would
create an easy new tool for government surveillance and
could be used to target critics of the government, as has
happened periodically throughout our nation's history.''
Mercury News researcher Leigh Poitinger contributed to this
report. Contact Paul Rogers at progers@sjmercury.com or
(408) 920-5045. Contact Elise Ackerman at
eackerman@sjmercury.com or (408) 271-3774.